Elite Athletics & Classic Rock ...."These Eyes ..."

What does the classic rock song "These Eyes" by the Guess Who have to do with elite athletics?

Nothing really, other then it is a good song and they are also from my home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba among other great musicians like Neil Young ...

Or maybe there is a connection, here is a little story ...

This past summer (2009) I attended a Z-Health seminar in the USA. One thing I took away from the course was the importance of the eyes in sporting excellence. Eye sight as measured by how well you read an eye chart is only one aspect of using your eyes and doesn't take into effect the other functions (e.g. convergence or peripheral vision).

By the way, my eyes were not to good which may explain some of my athletic incompetence.

Then, this past week I was meeting with an international Water Polo coach who was in Copenhagen (my current place of residence) for the LEN Conference. We were talking training for Water Polo since he has heard I am fairly on top of the research in this field (see www.waterpolotraining.net).

One of the things he wanted to know was how do you train athletes to react quicker. As an example, you see something happen, process it, make a decision and act. How can you make this whole process quicker?

My great answer to him was "... Uhhh ...Uhhh ... good question"

But after a few more seconds of thought, I told him about the eyes and just this past few days I also came across this article.

http://www.livescience.com/culture/090910-top-tennis-players-science.html

For any sport that involves a moving object, athletes must learn the three levels of response for interceptive timing tasks. 

• First, there is a basic reaction, also known as optometric reaction (in other words, see it and get out of the way).

• Next, there is a perceptual reaction, meaning you actually can identify the object coming at you and can put it in some context (for example: That is a tennis ball coming at you and not a bird swooping out of the sky).

• Finally, there is a cognitive reaction, meaning you know what is coming at you and you have a plan of what to do with it (return the ball with top-spin down the right line).

This is very interesting information and could be the missing link in athletic development.

How many athletes have you coached or played with who just did not seem to meet their potential?

Maybe one of the road blocks were their eyes.

I will talk about more of this in future post and even show some simple eye exercises you can do.

Be Well,

Michael Reid
www.michaelreid.ca
www.waterpolotraining.net

VIDEO LINK - "These Eyes" as performed by my boys "The Farrell Bros".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AWvrCVwnvg

Comments

[jphillips]

I wonder how much eyes play into young athletes shooting right to the goalie in water polo. Especially if they have to turn and shoot quickly without taking time to stop and think about shooting at an exact spot instead of thinking shoot at the cage in general.